My Quest for Sleep
Last month my sleep issues decided to just lose their every loving mind and became unbearable. My ambien even stopped working. Then one night I slept. One glorious wonderful night.
I was determined to repeat this magical event so I did everything the same the next day. Ate the same foods, the same level of activity and same patterns, and I slept again. Day 3 I was out of the same foods and my brain said meh,it was probably just the cycle of sleep issues so on day 3 I went back to my normal patterns and got the expected results. No sleep.
Off to over-thinking this whole thing again to figure out why. The only big difference I saw was the food. On the days I slept I had eaten foods that are not in my normal rotation, eggs, yoghurt, (Coconut milk*) banana and sunflower seed butter*. So then I started looking for the common element in these foods.
I had inadvertently dosed myself with Tryptophan! So then I started reading up on Tryptophan. It is an essential amino acid, not just a chemical in turkey that makes you sleepy, and it is something that I do not get a lot of because of my not quite normal diet.
So, I have been making an effort to add tryptophan containing foods, I bought tryptophan supplements for the days when I cannot eat the foods I need and one other addition is Tart Cherry juice. Tart cherries have a lot of benefits and since cherry is one of my favorite flavors it was an easy add.
I also added an inexpensive OTC sleep aid to replace my no longer working Ambien.
I feel like a new person! I still wake up 17 times a night but at least now I can go back to sleep. I don’t know how long this new sleep cycle will last but I am going to enjoy the heck out of it while it does!
*Peanut butter makes me feel icky as does dairy yogurt.
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